The Tireless Toad

A few weeks ago Howie, Kevin and I climbed Ashcroft Mountain. The hike was beautiful, the views were great and my peanut butter and banana sandwich at the summit was delicious. There were tons of awesome finds along the way, what may have been a bears den, some spectacular lodgepole pines, Howie narrowly avoiding an old tree crashing into his head and then later almost stepping on an elk calf and even some big cat tracks. But on the ascent down I made a find that trumps all the others. I know... at this point you are thinking that this day most certainly cannot get much better. I was thinking the exact same thing as we made our final steep ascent down to Express Creek Road. But, with a final leap down to the dusty rock covered road I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. A small trickle of water was slowly flowing out of the side of the mountain and there bathing in a cool puddle just in front of my boot was a toad! I absolutely love toads. They may be my favorite animal. They're so rough and tough with there warty skin and distinctive stocky build. I was ecstatic to say the least, but not just because I like the little guys so much. This was no ordinary Eastern American Toad found throughout the eastern United States. This was a boreal toad (Bufo boreas boreas). Boreal toads are Colorado's only alpine species of toad living at elevations between 7,500 and 12,000 feet. Their habitats are restricted to areas where mating is possible in spruce/fFir forests where they can utilize calm sun exposed water. Unlike many other frogs and toads, the boreal toads mating call is a soft chirp rather than the deep loud call of many of his relatives. Unfortunately the boreal toad is an endangered species in Colorado due to a chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). The Colorado Division of Wildlife is currently studying these guys to see if they can come up with a solution to this epidemic. More information about the Boreal Toad Conservation Plan which was completed in 2001 can be found on the CDOW website. If you do happen to sight a boreal toad in the wild contact your local CDOW officer with its location. We were sure to let them know where we found this little guy. Hopefully we will be able to solve this problem so that these wonderful creates will be around for everyone to enjoy as much as I did.

Storms (and the power of observations)

As someone who loves powder skiing, I am somewhat obsessed with weather forecasts. If it is my day to be hanging out at the ACES front desk, you can bet that there are probably multiple weather forecasts up on my computer.

However, while reading weather forecasts is great, experiencing weather is even better. This winter I have been lucky enough to get to spend a lot of time experiencing weather, particularly up at the Wapiti Wildlife Center (and warming hut!) at the top of the Elk Camp chairlift in Snowmass. The Wapiti is at 11,325 feet above sea level, and sits on an exposed open area near the top of Burnt Mountain. The weather down in Base Village at Snowmass is often very different from up at the Wapiti!

At the Wildlife Center we have a small weather station, which includes a Taylor Thermograph.

Thanks to Winding Way Weather for the picture. A thermograph does exactly what it sounds like; it makes a graph of the temperature over a week long period (or multiple weeks if you forget to change the paper!). This lets us look at the temperature over the whole winter. By doing this, we can analyze the weather far more than just saying 'it's really cold out today!'.

Here is a scan of one of my favorite thermograph sheets from this winter. I went over the red ink that the thermograph uses with a black permanent marker, so that it is more visible (click on the image to view it in a larger format!).

The first weekend of April (Friday and Saturday, April 1st and 2nd) were classic spring skiing days. Temperatures got into the low 40s up at 11,000 feet! For reference, there tends to be a difference of 3 degrees Fahrenheit for every 1,000 feet of elevation change, so back in town the temperatures were in the low 50s. However, on Sunday a cold front came in. Looking at the thermograph, the temperature dropped ten degrees in about an hour! While we may remember this storm and this temperature change, it is striking to see it recorded on the graph.

Here's one last way of looking at the storm, from one of my favorite weather forecasters, Joel Gratz and his Colorado Powder Forecast.

Right now we're enjoying a mid April blizzard here in Aspen-- hope you are all enjoying it!

Frost-free Days - Why Give a Hoot?

Living in Aspen has more than enough perks, from the incredible skiing in the winter to endless backpacking in the summer. The amazing snow and the beautiful sunny days makes you grow accustomed to the weather patterns and the climate of the area.

As a Naturalist and avid outdoor lover I couldn’t help but wonder, how is the warming of our planet affecting the Aspen area? A few naturalists and I dug into some data, provided by NOAA and Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, for the Independence Pass Snotel Site and found a noticeable change in frost-free days in the recent past. There are a lot of climate change numbers, from temperature increases to carbon emissions, it’s hard to keep up with all of the numbers. Focusing on the Aspen region we looked at the number of frost-free days recorded at the Independence Pass Snotel Site. Now, you maybe asking yourself: what exactly are frost-free days? Well, frost-free days are the number of days in a year with minimum temperatures above freezing (0° Celsius). 

This data was collected by the Natural Resource Conservation Service of the USDA.

The above record shows a linear increase in the number of frost-free days at the Independence Snotel site from 1986 to 2010. Starting with only 27 frost-free days in 1986 it has been hiking up to 53 days in 1992, 84 in 2000 and onward to 106 frost-free days last winter in 2010. It is hard to look at this data and not think, how does this impact our seasonal snowpack? How will more forst-free days affect our forests? Our rivers? Weltands? Fishing? White water rafting? Agriculture? And, what will this graph look like in twenty years?

Winter Watering Hole

As ACES naturalists, we often get to see--and share with our guests--signs of winter animals while on the trail.  However, due to the nocturnal or crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk) habits of many of these animals, we rarely get the chance to see them in action.  Last night I was given a rare opportunity to see one of these elusive animals on the prowl in my own backyard.

Several miles up Castle Creek Road, SW of Aspen, my cabin is remote and mostly undisturbed by human activity.  Running alongside the cabin, buried under several feet of snow, is a meandering creek that opens into a small pond. Due to the current, the pond seldom freezes completely at the inflow, providing a vital watering hole for many overwintering animals.  Throughout the winter, the morning has often revealed a flurry of tracks--snapshots of their nighttime ice capades.  Last night, with the aid of an infrared, motion-activated camera, I caught a glimpse of this activity.  Much to my surprise however, the cavalcade of winter animals that I had envisioned, turned out to be the mere work of a solitary red fox.

Although omnivores, in the winter, red foxes depend largely on the small rodents living beneath the snow pack in the subnivean zone for food.  Locating a mobile food source, often buried under a meter or more of snow, foxes have to cover a lot of ground.  Once a prey animal such as a vole or mouse is found, the fox utilizes its acute hearing to pinpoint its depth and location. The fox leaps high into the air and using its tail to direct its flight, dives into the snow, trapping the animal.
To see a video of this in action, click here.

From the images I’ve collected, I suspect that the fox behind my cabin has worked out a sort of nightly routine.  It seems to make its first appearance around 9 pm, around the same time that I often begin to settle in and turn off my lights inside. Throughout the night it returns, but only for a few minutes and a quick drink, before heading off in a new direction. By 5 am the visits have ended.

A fresh perspective on Pine Beetles

Last Thursday at Hallam Lake for the Naturalist Night speaker series, Professor Dan Tinker from the University of Wyoming gave a really illuminating talk about some of the science and research going into the Rocky Mountain Pine Beetle outbreak we are witnessing across the West. Living, working, and learning in Colorado nearly my entire life, I thought I had a decent grasp on most of the science looking at the interactions of Beetles in our forests. Professor Tinker quickly dispelled that little notion of mine.
In one hour, he presented the most scientifically sound overview of the beetle outbreak that I have read or heard about since my undergraduate days. One of the more interesting things about his presentation was that he had a much different message about the beetle epidemic than a lot of the articles we read about in national or local newspapers. His presentation wasn't all doom-and-gloom, in fact, it was quite the opposite. His assertion, which he explained quite well, was that many of the forests which are being hit by the beetles are regenerating with young seedlings and saplings as many of the older trees are being killed. There are lots of younger trees surviving even in the wake of massive die-offs and many of the lodgepole pine forests are going to regenerate within a couple of decades. I have hiked through areas in Grand and Summit county and seen the acres of dead trees but you can't help but noticing the young survivors. These young survivors are going to be the next generation of trees in the forest. The future for our forests isn't truly as bleak as some sources make it out to be.
Professor Tinker used the Yellowstone fires of 1988 as a comparative model for the beetle kill, and it was a powerful example of how resilient many forests are. After the massive fires ran through vast swaths of forest, a couple of years later Prof. Tinker and colleagues witnessed many of the areas recovering quite rapidly with young aspen and lodgepole filling in the vacuum left by the fires. If forests can rebound from a massive fire disturbance then it is likely a pine beetle epidemic isn't going spell the end for our forests. He also presented research looking into the likelihood of a forest fire occurring after the onset of a beetle infestation. Many of the findings suggest the beetle-killed trees don't have a significant impact on increasing the probability of fires starting in a forest. That was new information to me.
Prof. Tinker also brought up the conversation of climate change and beetle infestations. Warmer winters and periods of drought have allowed the more beetles to survive winters than in the past and drought is making it more difficult for trees to fend off swarms of beetles. However, trees have a pretty good defense against beetles (forcing them out with a resinous sap) but the blue-stain fungus that the beetles carry in their jaws is truly responsible for killing many of the trees. The blue-stain fungus moves into the xylem (sapwood) layer of a tree and it basically cuts off the flow of water throughout the tree. The beetles have evolved to carry the blue-stain fungus.
Dan Tinker's presentation reminded me that things are not always as they seem, especially in nature. There are always multiple layers at work in ecology and we must remember to look at nature holistically to grasp the totality of a phenomena like a insect epidemic. Its also important to keep in mind that a system in nature (like a forest) can recover from major disturbances like fire and insect outbreaks.

If your in Aspen, be sure to come by ACES at Hallam Lake on Thursday Nights at 7:30 for Naturalist Nights. Its free and continue through the end of March. Thanks for reading!

Surprises at Hallam Lake

After almost nine months at ACES (has it really been that long?), I'm beginning to feel like I know Hallam Lake well. However, the best thing about Hallam Lake is that there is always something new to find.
Last week, after a lot of snow over the weekend, Robin and I were walking around the lake, shoveling out the platforms and bridges. Coming around the corner past the big blue spruce, I saw something exciting ahead of me.






In the fresh snow, there was an area with a bit of blood on the snow, some small downy feathers, and some wing marks in the snow! There were no tracks around the site, other than the trail, and no tunnels either-- it was a mystery! Robin and I discussed for a while what could have happened- at first we thought a large bird had gotten a weasel that had put up a fight, but without tracks or a tunnel, it couldn't be!
Here's a more close up shot of the scene:



We decided it must have been a large bird killing a small bird. A male golden eagle has been visiting our female all winter-- perhaps this was his meal?
That same morning, there were also beds on the path where a couple of elk had been spending the night.
I'll admit, I was wrong-- there are still lots of things to learn about Hallam Lake!

The Mink and the Fish

About 7:45 Sunday morning before heading to the West Buttermilk beach, I spotted the flash of a brown weaselly animal out of the laundry room window. I yelled for Jamie to quickly look out the bathroom to see what it was. She said it was carrying something and that it was headed back toward the hanging log bird feeder that has had a pine marten in it in past years. I caught up with it as it was going along by the kitchen window and around to the front of the house. Mink!

This picture was taken out the front door glass. Jack and Jesse got a great view. The fish was nearly the same size as the mink and was still alive flopping around. Magpies were a mobbing racket. Seemed like the mink was looking for a place to stash the fish. Under the house? He dug around a little but soon grabbed the fish and escaped the magpies under the fence, likely finding a good spot in the ACES woodpile. It was a nice start to a beautiful 40 degree sunny day. I guess the little beaver backwater created in the restored channel (1996) next to Peggy's Island holds fish now and makes for good mink habitat. Thanks Beav! Another piece to this story is the Jenny Adair constructed wetland (2007) which has helped the water quality on the Roaring Fork and increased the acreage of wildlife habitat around Hallam Lake. Mountain Lion, Elk, and Mink all right here during the past month.

Winter Birds: Robins and Grosbeaks

While some animals hibernate all winter, and some migrate to warmer places, others are active and thriving. We have recently seen pine grosbeaks flying around the mountain ash trees at Hallam Lake! This large and rare member of the finch family is eating the fruit off the ash trees and serviceberries right along the short driveway into ACES. Thankfully Lindsay Fortier captured these birds with her camera before they flew away.

The winter habitat of the pine grosbeak is determined by the availability of food. With a limited amount of fruiting trees the grosbeaks are known to remain on a single tree for many days until all of the berries are gone. Their mild temperament and slow-moving, seemingly lazy, behavior caused the grosbeak to get the nickname, 'mope.'

Many people presume that our local Colorado robins migrate to a warmer climate for the cold winter. And they would be correct... for the most part. Animals that are active in our winter world are in the constant business of trying to find energy; we all need food to generate heat to keep ourselves alive. While many robins do migrate away from Aspen, some also take the energy budget challenge and stay. The amount of non-migratory robins depends on the amount of available food in a particular year. This year seems to have a plentiful amount of berries. Thus, we are seeing many robins that have decided to stay the cold winter.

Puzzling Prickly Prints

          Atop Aspen Mountain I was waiting for guests to join me on a tour. One o’clock passed and no one arrived except a fellow Naturalist, Robin. Instead of taking Robin on a tour that she also leads, we decided to just walk the trail and enjoy the day.  As we walked away from the hustle and bustle of the ski hill we started through the forest. It had just snowed the day before, so the snow was gleaming and untouched. As we walked up a nice hill tracks crossed our paths, I hadn’t seen anything like them before. And with a few seconds of thoughts, I yelled out in excitement, “porcupine tracks, porcupine tracks”! These are probably the coolest tracks I have seen yet. I like to think of a porcupine track like a broom, they waddle along, leaning from one side to the other, dragging their feet and quills as they sweep across the snow. We were both so excited we decided we had to find the prickly fellow. 

            At first we thought he couldn’t have gone far, maybe just in the tree a few yards away, but it turns out our prickly friend must have been on a mission of his own. We followed his tracks across the snowmobile tracks of Richmond Ridge Road and up a mighty steep, but small, hill. He traveled across our snowshoe trail, once again, and down the hill towards Little Annies Road. We tracked him for quite a ways but then decided he was heading all the way down the hill, a trek we were not equipped for. So after cutting through the fresh snow, and chasing down our unseen porcupine we had to abandon our mission and accept that he was somewhere in the trees, eating away at the bark of a spruce tree. But I have hope that I will run into, hopefully not literally, one soon. One has been spotted on Elk Camp on Snowmass Mountain, so hopefully I will get to see an active prickly porcupine before the winter is over!

A Mountain Lion Reality

There is nothing like waking up early and driving 12 miles out of Aspen on a windy road. Actually, there is nothing like waking up early on a snowy Sunday in January and driving up this road before any other vehicle in four inches of new snow. Driving no more than 15mph I was able to make out some tracks on the snow covered road in front of me. Immediately reminded of the book I am currently reading, The Tiger by John Valliant, I stopped my car to investigate.

Describing a journey in Russia's Far East, looking for Amur Tigers, Valliant writes,

There is an unintentional courtesy in the winter forest that occurs around pathways of any kind. It takes a lot of energy to break trail through the snow, especially when it's crusty or deep, so whoever goes first, whether animal, human or machine, is preforming a valuable service for those following behind. Because energy - i.e. food - is at a premium in the winter, labor-saving gifts of this kind are rarely refused. As long as the footpath, logging road, frozen river - or highway - is going in the right direction, other forest creatures will use it too, regardless of who made it. In this way, paths have a funneling, riverlike effect on the tributary creatures around them, they can make for some strange encounters.

Imagining myself Trush, the hero and tiger tracker of Valliant's book, I was unrelistically praying the tracks were those of the immense Amur Tiger. (This book has me obsessed.) However, I was delighted to find the tracks of a different charismatic megafauna, the mountain lion - a local creature I have never seen in the wild. The tracks were alternating in a not quite perfect stepping motion, each print being about 2.5 inches wide. Perfect steppers would use the same place to step with the front foot and then the hind foot, another way to save energy, and making it appear that only two feet were walking in the area. I've read that in deeper snow a mountain lion would be a perfect stepper, but these few fresh inches did not provide enough of a challenge to warrant this careful pattern. There were no other tracks nearby. It seemed this lion, as Valliant describes, was just taking advantage of this previously plowed road as a way to travel upvalley.

Realizing that I was standing in the middle of the road, and a truck could come around the corner any second, I jumped back into my car and continued the slow valley climb. The tracks continued for another three miles! I parked at Toklat and walked next to the tracks until they turned west into the woods. I suppose it wasn't my day to meet a lion face to face.

Telling one of the 'cowboys' who works at the Ski Touring Center about my discovery he casually pulled out a gun and told me that 'Yea they come around this way from time to time. Knew it was smart of me to grab this when i woke.' Responding to the terror on my face he assured me that no, he's not hunting the lions, just trying to make sure they don't bother the work horses up there. He said he would never kill a lion, just scare him off...

He laughed at me, the silly animal loving naturalist, and went on his way.